At The Existentialist Café
  • Published: 3 March 2016
  • ISBN: 9781473545328
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 448
Categories:

At The Existentialist Café

Freedom, Being, and Apricot Cocktails

Formats & editions
Paperback
27 Feb 2017
EBook
3 Mar 2016
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From the bestselling author of How to Live, an enthralling and original new book about a group of young thinkers, the birth of existentialism and some of the biggest questions of all

Shortlisted for the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize

Paris, near the turn of 1932-3. Three young friends meet over apricot cocktails at the Bec-de-Gaz bar on the rue Montparnasse. They are Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and their friend Raymond Aron, who opens their eyes to a radical new way of thinking…

‘It’s not often that you miss your bus stop because you’re so engrossed in reading a book about existentialism, but I did exactly that... The story of Sartre, Beauvoir, Camus, Heidegger et al is strange, fun and compelling reading. If it doesn’t win awards, I will eat my copy’ Independent on Sunday

‘Bakewell shows how fascinating were some of the existentialists’ ideas and how fascinating, often frightful, were their lives. Vivid, humorous anecdotes are interwoven with a lucid and unpatronising exposition of their complex philosophy… Tender, incisive and fair’ Daily Telegraph

‘Quirky, funny, clear and passionate… Few writers are as good as Bakewell at explaining complicated ideas in a way that makes them easy to understand’ Mail on Sunday
  • Published: 3 March 2016
  • ISBN: 9781473545328
  • Imprint: Vintage Digital
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 448
Categories:

About the author

Sarah Bakewell

Sarah Bakewell had a wandering childhood in Europe, Australia and England. After studying at the University of Essex, she wrote fiction and worked in bookshops before becoming Curator of early printed books at the Wellcome Institute Library for the History of Medicine in London. She curated an exhibition with Marina Warner for the Science Museum and catalogues rare book collections for the National Trust. She is the author of The Smart;The English Dane: From King of Iceland to Tasmanian Convict, and the bestselling biography How to Live: A life of Montaigne in one question and twenty attempts at an answer. www.sarahbakewell.com

Also by Sarah Bakewell

Humanly Possible
How to Live
The English Dane
The Smart
See all

Praise for At The Existentialist Café

How to Live is a superb, spirited introduction to the master, and should have its readers rushing straight to the essays themselves

Adam Thorpe, Guardian

Bakewell writes with verve. This is an intellectually lively treatment of a Renaissance giant and his world

Daily Telegraph

Illuminating and humane book... It's rare to come across a biographer who remains so deliciously fond of her subject... How to Live will delight and illuminate

Independent

Sarah Bakewell has written a marvellously confident and clear introduction to Montaigne...a rare achievement. Sarah Bakewell deserves congratulations for opening Montaigne to new readers so very appealingly

Evening Standard

With this splendidly conceived and exquisitely written double biography - of both Montaigne the man and Montaigne the book - Sarah Bakewell should persuade another generation to fall in love with Montaigne

Sunday Times